Note that the book is featured in the movie's poster,typical during Hollywood's Golden Age.Walt Disney may turn in his grave or thaw and drop deader if and when he learns that Bambi, the book he adapted to create the animation classic, was written by a man who is solidly credited as being the anonymous author of a celebrated and notorious work of German erotica.In 1906, an erotic memoir was privately published. Purportedly written by a Viennese prostitute at the end of her life, Josefine Mutzenbacher, oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne, it became a popular success; it is now a...
ReadInk Rare Books Proprietor Outs His Secret Job
Howard Prouty, home on the range at the Margaret Herrick Librarywhere he wrangles and corrals collections.Our friend and colleague, Howard Prouty, of ReadInk books, has had a day job for around twenty-five years, one that I presumed he wished to maintain a low profile about.A private man, he may be uneasy but a recent Oscar®-related newspaper feature discusses itToday, the Omaha World-Herald features a high profile feature about Howard and his job as acquisitions archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library.As the story notes, "Prouty spends lots of time in dead people's homes, attics,...
Penguin to Publish Apocryphal Boswell MS on Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson in 1775, by Joshua Reynolds, reading, with no little consternation, Boswell's unpublished, other biography of him.With the emergence of monsters reimagined into classic literature – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters, and the upcoming Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter – it’s easy to forget that during full moons, Samuel Johnson, the most distinguished man of letters in English history, grew hirsute, lustful, and howled. Samuel Johnson, Werewolf?No. As told by his amanuensis, James Boswell, it is the book he dared not publish in his lifetime from a manuscript long thought apocryphal or lost, The Other...
Art Center To Fill Acres of Books Site
A rendering of the proposed Art Exchange project.(Photo credit: Rodolfo_M)When Acres of Books, the legendary used and rare book shop that for seventy-four years provided Southern California book lovers and literati with a place to get joyously lost in and, ultimately, became a designated cultural landmark, closed in 2008 the grief was profound.Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA, at the time of its closing in 2008.Now, the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency Board has approved the final environmental impact report allowing Art Exchange, an art-driven facility where visitors can watch local artists create, buy art and attend classes, to be...
Hugh Hefner, Teen Cartoonist
The playboy of the Western World at age 16.Jane Sellers and Hugh Hefner, 1943.They dated each other’s best friend when they were in high school together in Chicago. When Jane Sellers moved to California in 1943 her sixteen year-old school pal, Hugh Hefner, began writing to her. Their friendship and correspondence endured for sixty years.July 2, 1943. "When I said I was a man of liesure(I still don't know whether I'm spelling this right)I wasn't kiddin." Many of Hef's letters toJane Sellers at this time were festoonedwith cartoons in the margins.“At 16, I knew he was destined to do amazing...